Abstract
In the 1930s and 1940s, multiple five-year Soviet plans for national industrialization transformed Ukraine’s capital Kyiv (Russian Kiev) into a dramatic industrial metropolis. By 1960, Kyiv was a core industrial city with renovated prerevolutionary factories and massive new industrial enterprises. Ukraine’s 1991 independence threatened industrial complexes with demolition for retail, residential, and office uses. We examine Kyiv’s Soviet industrial legacy as prescribed in master plans of 1936 and 1947, and successive five-year plans. We profile five significant industrial complexes and their divergent fates today. We call for future transformations of Kyiv’s monumental Soviet industrial enterprises with enhanced awareness of heritage value.
The city of Kyiv (Київ in Ukrainian, also known as the Russian Kiev or Киев) is an ancient metropolis with almost 1,500 years’ history in the very geographic heart of Ukraine. During the centuries preceding the twentieth, Kyiv intermittently lost, then regained its status as capital, ultimately being transformed into a secondary city in Russian-dominated empires. During Soviet times (1917–1991), Kyiv experienced substantial growth centered not on cultural importance but on industry. The Soviet Union’s first two five-year plans (1928–1937) for national industrialization dramatically transformed Kyiv from a trading city based on crafts and commerce into a principal industrial node of the USSR. The city’s physical redevelopment happened so rapidly that adaptation of the old city fabric was hardly required: instead, new districts were added with great rapidity. As a result, today’s Kyiv consists of districts belonging to different eras: reconstructed medieval monasteries adjoin monumental postwar 1950s boulevards, all surrounded by vast districts of prefabricated, multifamily apartment buildings and an increasing number of postindependence “capitalist districts.” A large proportion of this cityscape is industrial: much of historic Kyiv is comprised of large industrial estates constructed or reconstructed under mid-century Soviet industrialization plans (Figure 1). These industrial estates represent not only exemplars of significant industrial architecture but represent unique urban ensembles. Today, many of these spaces are under threat. Alternative futures for Kyiv’s industrial spaces are needed to forestall the imposition of conventional, business-as-usual solutions that typically require clearance of industrial sites. As a response, this study documents three scenarios for reactivation of industrial districts and structures that bypass conventional approaches. These scenarios increase awareness of the value of ex-industrial landscapes; temporarily occupy industrial space through cultural appropriation; and rehabilitate buildings where a new function becomes a catalyst for industrial district changes and potentially for preservation of industrial heritage.

A comparison of industrial zones as designated in Kyiv’s general plans of 1936 and 2025 (diagram by authors).
Since 1991, Kyiv has been the capital of independent Ukraine. No longer a secondary city in a socialist country, Kyiv has experienced substantial development under capitalism. Hotels, luxury offices, and housing estates have proliferated in the city center and at the city periphery. The transformation of the city’s industrial districts, on the other hand, has been slower. With many of their functions and enterprises obsolete, and many buildings redundant and abandoned, Kyiv’s industrial districts have much reduced activity. At the same time, the central, often dramatic location of some of these districts near the city center and along the Dnipro 1 (Russian Dnieper) river has made them increasingly tempting redevelopment targets. Demolition of some districts has already begun, while others remain thus far mostly intact. Kyiv’s industrial heritage is substantial and extensive, but it is under increasing threat. What is to happen to the city’s industrial districts and to their impressive physical heritage of industrial structures and ensembles?
Around the world, formerly industrial districts in deindustrializing cities have experienced divergent fates. Some districts, like Paris’s Parc de la Villette, 2 have been transformed into monumental cultural complexes, but these transformations may come at the expense of the district’s physical fabric and industrial structures. 3 London’s Docklands, 4 for example, is an impressive office district, but it shows little of its past as an industrial warehouse area, instead representing, at least to one author, “one of the worst collections of late twentieth-century building to be seen anywhere in the world.” Germany’s renovations of deindustrializing cities, on the other hand, are sensitive to and expressive of the industrial past; the well-known Emscher Park in the Ruhr valley of western Germany contains numerous industrial structures tastefully renovated as recreational sites, civic structures, or institutions. 5 Europe’s renovations of industrial districts have typically come at substantial expense to national and state governments: industrial redevelopment is never cheap, particularly when environmental cleanup costs are applied. 6
The United States represents a cautionary case of industrial heritage preservation. With limited government funding, municipalities dependent upon local property tax, and intermittent social commitment for industrial preservation, examples of preservation of twentieth-century American industrial districts are limited and often adventitious. Preservation of steel mills, for example, has been limited to occasional fragments of blast furnaces, with most structures demolished for economic development ventures. Nonprofit groups, often quite limited in capacity, have played an important role in promoting the survival of such structures as remain. 7 Detroit, a city that was once home to America’s finest collection of automobile factories, is a particularly cautionary tale. The city has demolished all but a few remnants of its early and mid-twentieth-century automotive heritage, with little outcry from citizens or preservationists. 8 Deindustrializing Buffalo has preserved many of its iconic grain elevators through the efforts of iconoclastic developers and through the sheer indestructibility of the powerful concrete structures. 9 Even New York City, with a strong preservation community, has stumbled when it comes to industrial heritage; the city recently demolished the majority of the Domino sugar plant to permit high-density luxury housing. 10 Across America, much twentieth-century industrial heritage has vanished nearly without trace. 11
Evidence that other ex-Soviet countries can preserve industrial heritage is mixed. Generally, weak markets have stifled redevelopment in many areas, but in cities with active development markets like Moscow, demolition of industrial heritage has often proceeded. In secondary Russian cities like Orenberg or Yakutsk, significant industrial structures have survived through benevolent neglect rather than purposeful restoration; there is simply no demand for many former industrial buildings nor is there demand for much land in former industrial districts given that the cities themselves are often shrinking. The same is true in Ukraine for smaller cities like Kherson, 12 Pokrovsk, 13 Dobropillya, 14 Severodonets, 15 or Kostyantynivka, 16 where industrial plants that closed in the early 1990s were inadvertently mothballed by stagnant markets and governmental dysfunction in the following decades.
Active preservation and reuse of ex-industrial facilities have also occurred in the ex-Soviet sphere. Moscow’s ZIL social condenser, part of a former automobile plant, has been preserved and rehabilitated even as the larger district around ZIL has been demolished and redeveloped for luxury housing (http://www.tspa.eu/portfolio/redevelopment-of-amo-zil-factory/). Other examples of repurposed factories, most with cultural uses, include a relatively new project in Tbilisi called Fabrika (Factory; fabrikatbilisi.com), another in Moscow also called Fabrika (www.fabrikacci.com), the Promprylad project (https://promprylad.ua/en/) in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, and the Art Zavod Platforma facility (artzavodplatforma.com) in Kyiv. Promprylad is unusual among these rehabilitation cases in that much of the rehabilitation has been driven by crowdsourced, small-scale investors (https://inventure.com.ua/en/investments/promprylad.renovation-in-ivano-frankivsk) rather than a single large investor. A small facility on site called MetaLab is also promoting citizen involvement in this rehabilitation (https://www.metalab.space/).
Within those ex-Soviet or ex-socialist countries now within the European Union, governmental efforts have assumed a stronger role in the rehabilitation of industrial space. The Telliskivi creative city in Tallinn, occupying clusters of industrial buildings near the city center, has been supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture. The creative city project strategy is in line with the city’s larger economic development strategy (https://issuu.com/creativeindustries/docs/review2011). As a result, Tallinn government played a mediating role between the current industrial tenants of Telliskivi and the site developers. In this case, both the buildings and current activities of the site are perceived to have value, indicating that at least some will be protected. In Ljubljana, Slovenia, the Rog Center of Contemporary Art (https://tovarna.org/), an industrial rehabilitation project sponsored by the European Union, has also combined government initiative and funding with grassroots efforts from current occupants of the site.
The rampant demolition of industrial heritage for economic development, or for sheer gentrification of city districts, is increasingly considered misguided. China, long a leader in demolition of cultural and architectural heritage, has increasingly elected to preserve industrial heritage to promote arts, culture, tourism, and global visibility. Beijing’s 798 Art Zone is one well-known example, while the Shougang Steel Plant is another. 17 The latter, a modernist complex built in 1950s in collaboration between China and the German Democratic Republic and vacant since 2008, has been partially repurposed for the 2022 Winter Olympics, with other areas scheduled to become an “industrial relics park” (https://www.inexhibit.com/case-studies/cctn-design-transforms-former-blast-furnace-in-beijing-into-a-museum/; http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/14/WS5c64c552a3106c65c34e940f.html). The spectacular architecture and unique spatial experience of twentieth-century industrial structures are the key drivers of China’s industrial preservation campaign.
While industrial districts are experiencing postindustrial transformation in both Western (e.g., non-post-Soviet) and Eastern (e.g., post-Soviet or postsocialist) countries, the following particular aspects of such transformation in Eastern countries may be highlighted. Commonly the industrial legacy of postsocialist cities is undervalued and even undiscovered. Neither national law pertaining to the cultural realm nor much academic attention is devoted to industrial heritage.
This is particularly the case in Kyiv and in Ukraine. 18 Kyiv’s two contemporary general plans do not accommodate industrial heritage preservation. The project of General Plan 2040: Kyiv 2020 19 suggests relocation of poorly performing industrial enterprises outward from the city to its outskirts and proposes renovating the vacated industrial sites. General Plan 2025 proposes restoration of housing and civic functions adjacent to abandoned or poorly functioning industrial sites but does not address the industrial sites themselves. Both plans understand industrial sites, as resources for new development, and as opportunities for dramatic spatial transformation. But these plans do not treat the potential historical, ecological, or social resources provided by extant industrial architecture and urbanism in Kyiv. Even the historical and architectural proposals within General Plan 2040, though acknowledging individual industrial structures, neglect to include industrial complexes and industrial landscapes as physical entities worthy of consideration.
Some industrial revitalization in Kyiv has been undertaken by private-sector actors. Such projects as Izolyatsia, UnitCity, Art-Zavod Platforma, the Bylshovyk retail, and entertainment center (explained later in this study) have been constructed, but heritage is not always a consideration in these projects. What is perhaps Kyiv’s best known industrial heritage project, the Art Arsenal, is an exception in that architectural heritage was specifically considered and that the end use was cultural rather than for-profit.
National laws regarding revitalization and heritage in the industrial sector are rare as well. The National law called “Industrial Park” (https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/5018-17), realized in 2012, created a basic regulation for the creation of new economic functions with a combination of activities within industrial zones. However, few such industrial parks have been created in Kyiv although many have been constructed in the suburban Kyivska oblast that surrounds Kyiv. The technopark “Bionic Hill” (http://bionic-hill.com/) is currently the sole industrial park in Kyiv constructed through state support. The project, which is currently frozen, aims to create a mixed-used area on around sixty hectares of a former military factory.
As a result of Ukraine’s comparative inaction, the potential role of cities’ postindustrial legacies in shaping and defining a city’s identity, collective memory, and political history is underdeveloped, as is the incorporation of those groups, often marginalized, who have been appreciating and occupying dilapidated industrial territories, into transformation processes. There are multiple reasons to acknowledge the value of postsocialist cities’ industrial heritage. First, these urban fabrics have much to contribute to urban planning and urban studies research. Russian historian Boris Groys 20 has noted that this heritage has remained for many years in the “dustbin of history” and that it merits “rediscovery.” Yet, while industrialization dramatically reshaped most Soviet cities, forming in many case unique ensembles of architectural and urban patterns, both theorists and practitioners continue to lack sufficient knowledge of this legacy. Instead, this legacy is left to be treated by the market as a land reserve for future development projects.
A city’s postindustrial legacy can also improve its citizens’ sense of identity and belonging, thereby preserving and enhancing a city’s symbolic quality, as Tweed and Sutherland 21 noted. Additionally, scholars have argued that the transformation of postsocialist cities’ industrial plants can have a positive interpersonal effect 22 and shape a place’s collective memory. 23 Incorporating or assimilating this legacy is possible but challenging, for cities in transition away from socialism. 24 Collectively, this literature sees the post-totalitarian industrial landscape as an instrument to positively enhance the accommodation and understanding of a difficult past, so long as that legacy is valued and appreciated. Such a goal could be truly significant and meaningful for “monocities” in the ex-Soviet sphere, cities centered on a single industry now in decline or even vanished. Without assimilating their industrial past, what new urban identity can such cities have?
Urban industrial heritage is additionally valuable for new activities, social, and economic inclusion. It has been almost sixty years since Jane Jacobs first called for the retention of “old buildings” and of historic urban fabric in general, both for the economic and social sustenance and space for innovation that such fabrics provide. 25 Hatherley 26 calls for attention to those spaces in post-Soviet cities that still have social meaning. Affordable former industrial spaces often possess such meaning for citizen initiatives and start-ups, particularly in small cities (https://issuu.com/urbancurators/docs/kostiantynivka) where land has low value and industrial property owners are derelict or absent. Even if Ukrainian law does not acknowledge Soviet-era industrial heritage, this does not mean that such heritage is not appreciated by artists’ communities and by local youth. The preservation of these industrial areas’ activities, spaces, and economic and cultural qualities could be a practical instrument for creating social diversity as these neighborhoods evolve.
All in all, preservation of Soviet-era industrial sites presents many opportunities: to improve understanding and to come to terms with the past, to create an urban identity, to provide greater social equality, and embrace citizen creativity. This is not to diminish the more conventional values—very high esthetic and spatial qualities, and a high level of affordability—that collectively argue for creative approaches to the transformation of this significant legacy of state socialism.
This study was motivated by an appreciation of Kyiv’s significant Soviet industrial heritage, a heritage shared by many other cities in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, and by the concern that regressive contemporary city-building processes threaten to demolish many of these Soviet-era structures and environments. The benevolent neglect of the post-Soviet era can last only so long; America’s negative preservation experience with twentieth-century industrial heritage indicates that without active use and appreciation of these structures, they will be removed and eventually vanish from the physical fabric, much as they have in places like Flint and Youngstown. 27 With elements of such transformation already underway in Kyiv, an enhanced understanding of the history, current conditions, and changes occurring to Kyiv’s industrial districts, most of which are little known outside of the former Soviet Union, 28 is urgent. It is this lacuna in both the English- and Ukrainian-language literature that this study hopes to address.
Kyiv’s Industrial Districts across Time, Pre-1936–1947.
a Industrial districts: the name of city areas where location of industrial enterprises was planned (Source: The Explanatory Report for the General Plan of 1936).
Kyiv and the 1936 General Plan
During Soviet times, significant transformations of Kyiv’s industrial landscape occurred through the siting of industrial districts and the placement of new socialist enterprises within them. However, the core of many of Kyiv’s industrial districts was formed in the prerevolutionary capitalist era, when Ukraine was under the governance of the Russian Empire. This study first recounts the development history of industrial production in prerevolutionary Kyiv. Following this, the article describes changes occurring in Kyiv’s industry after the 1917 Russian Revolution, particularly those proposals for industrial development declared in the General Plan for Reconstruction in Kyiv of 1936 (hereafter, the 1936 general plan). 31 This article then provides a detailed examination of this history and planning of five enterprises within the largest industrial areas proclaimed in the 1936 and follow-up 1947 general plans, including their origins in Soviet industrial planning and their transformations since Ukrainian independence and the return of capitalism in 1991.
Prerevolutionary Kyiv (pre-1917)
Prerevolutionary Kyiv was a craft industry city, famous for its unique products. Iyevleva pointed out characteristic features of the city’s industrial complex at the turn of the century, such as continuous increases in the volume and diversification of industrial production. 32 She also mentioned the emergence of such exotic manufactures as companies producing vinyl records, oak extracts, and artificial ice. By 1912, the number of craftsmen in Kyiv was approximately 30,000 and comprised sixty specialties, exceeding the number of workers in factories by about twofold. 33 As Ukraine was a primary grain producer for the Russian Empire, about 62 percent of all factories were occupied by the food industry, where mills produced almost half of the city’s total production. In 1912, there were ten such mills in Kyiv. 34
The architecture and urban planning of Imperial-era Kyiv up to 1917 were largely determined by the city’s vibrant, but only lightly regulated, economic system, together with its political situation as a subsidiary province of Russia. The city’s hilly topography, lack of state ownership of land, and limited urban regulations for the placement of enterprises led to building locations being determined predominantly by landowners, resulting in a chaotic, fragmented urban pattern. The high price of land leasing for entrepreneurs forced them to place production in small parcels in the city area, sometimes very near to housing, or on the city’s outskirts, where land was cheaper but access more difficult. 35 Another factor shaping development was the existence and proximity of water and rail transport. Overall, Kyiv’s historic development pattern, with palaces and monasteries on hilltops surrounded by residential development, dominated the shape of the city. Industrial enterprises played a secondary, infill spatial role along rail lines in the city’s valleys and along the Dnipro waterfront.
Soviet Kyiv (1917–1991) and the 1936 general plan
After a brief period of Ukrainian independence during the Russian Civil War (1918–1919), Kyiv became part of the constituent “republic” of Ukraine within the Soviet Union. The Soviet era, which lasted over seventy years, reshaped Kyiv from a craft-based, trading, lightly industrialized city into an industrial engine of the Soviet empire. After the October Revolution (1917), Soviet Kyiv began transforming into an industrial city where the food industry was no longer primary, giving way to machine-building, metallurgy, and construction. Almost all of contemporary Kyiv’s industrial areas were decreed in the Soviet era during the nation’s first two five-year plans (1928–1932 and 1933–1937). Prerevolutionary industrial areas were demolished or, if they remained, were appended to and altered; only a few buildings preserved their prerevolutionary form. 36
In 1919, Kyiv lost its status as capital when Kharkiv (Russian Kharkov) was declared the new capital of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. By 1934, when Kyiv superseded Kharkiv to again become capital, the city was still developing according to “Temporary Building Regulations” by Pavel Khaustov, 37 where industrial enterprises were marked post factum. There was as yet no general plan for the location of industry: industrial enterprises were located on an individual basis, and factory placement decisions were not coordinated with each other. 38 Despite this relatively chaotic planning, from an architectural point of view the 1919–1934 period is perhaps the most interesting period of Kyiv’s industrial development, since it was during that time that most constructivist-style industrial enterprises were built. 39 Among the constructivist industrial structures built during this period were the “KRES” Kyiv district electrical power station, the “10 years of Komsomol” IV Shoe factory, 40 the Rosa Kyiv Factory of Knitted Garments, bread-baking plant Number 4, and the Kyiv Film Factory (Figure 2).

Constructivist industrial architecture in Kyiv, with year constructed if available. 1: Kyiv District Electrical Power Station, or KRES, c.1930. 2: Bread-baking Plant Number 4, demolished 2012. 3: Number IV Shoe Factory, or “Ten Years of Komsomol” Factory, 1927–1928. 4: Rosa Kyiv Factory of Knitted Garments. 5: Film Factory, designed by Rykov, 1927–1929. Source: 1: https://pastvu.com/p/634586; 2: http://hmarochos.kiev.ua; https://bit.ly/39jksU; 3: Golovko 1962, figure 74; 4: https://www.retroua.com/year/1935/page/2/^; 5: Golovko 1962, figure 74.
Following Kyiv’s redesignation as Ukraine’s capital, the task emerged of developing a Kyiv general plan, the city’s first, to outline development objectives. This first general plan was created toward the end of the second national five-year plan in 1936. It was developed in just six months and approved after only two days of review. The 1936 general plan proclaimed the city’s development vector only five years into the future but fixed Kyiv’s course as an “exemplary socialistic city with industrial and transport value.” 41
Planning was a secretive activity in the Soviet Union. As land and economic activity was controlled by the state, planning was not the guide for market forces that it is considered today in capitalist countries. Instead, the general plan was just that: a centrally organized, conceived, and administered declaration of the location, content, and building form of state constructions. 42 The Soviet state had little motive to share such planning intentions with its population, since civil and property rights were not significant factors in the Soviet Union, so plans mostly remained secret. These top-down planning initiatives were technocratic in nature: plans were created and implemented by experts in planning institutes, which possessed monopolies on plan-making and plan administration.
Accordingly, Soviet general plan documents are difficult to find, even in today’s post-Soviet era. For our study, we were able to locate a folio of images from the 1936 general plan, 43 but we were unable to locate the original documents of the 1947 general plan. 44 The 1936 folio was located in the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine (Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi archive of gromaskyh organizatsui Ukrainy). This document was an A2 album by size and collected twelve schemes in around A0 format, organized by content. Part of the Explanatory Note to the 1947 general plan was identified for purchase in a different archive, but full explanatory reports for the general plan of 1947 were not available to the public in either the state and local archives of Ukraine nor could they be located in any of the institutions that once supervised general planning in Kyiv, including the Kyiv City Council, 45 Dipromisto 46 ; or Kyivgenplan. 47 Ultimately, we were able to reconstruct general plan intentions for Kyiv’s industrial districts from the “Explanatory Note” of the 1936 general plan, 48 and expert reports and part of the Explanatory Note for the 1947 general plan. Additionally, articles published in the magazines Socialist Kyiv and Soviet Ukrainian Architecture, an album with graphic materials, 49 and electronic versions of the 1947 plan’s principal pages (http://genplan.kiev.ua/ist.htm) provided additional information.
1936 general plan proposals
The 1936 plan contents included an assessment of the city’s condition before reconstruction and a criticism of this condition, together with a list of planned industrial enterprises, locations for the greater part of these enterprises, a zoning plan, the projected sizes of potential industrial areas, and additional separate folio sheets, or “detail plans,” for selected city districts.
Soviet planners generally critiqued the form of cities constructed during Russia’s prerevolutionary capitalist era, and Kyiv’s planners were no exception. The planners for “new socialist Kyiv,” which included Pavel Khaustov (author of the earlier “Temporary Rules for the Reconstruction of Kyiv” 50 ), and other planners like G. Golovko, V. Grechina, P. Yurchenko, I. Rodin, N. Gelstein, I., and I. Lipkes had actively criticized the prerevolutionary city form of Kyiv in previous articles published in Ukrainian architecture magazines. 51 These critiques of Czarist-era Kyiv were incorporated into the language of the 1936 general plan. Khaustov’s language was typical, excoriating the laissez-faire development of the czarist era: “The proletariat inherited a badly organized city territory. To a large extent, this is due not only to the fact that the capitalist planning of Kyiv passively adapted to the relief [city topography], but also to the whole historical development of the city.” 52 This critical position was supported by many of Kyiv’s intelligentsia. O. Simzen-Sychevsky, a historian and researcher, argued in 1938 that “in the feudal and capitalist times the city growth and development of Kyiv proceeded spontaneously, corresponding only with the landscape, [and] with the military and economic needs of that moment, while excluding even the smallest concerns about the interests of the population of working masses.” 53
The 1936 general plan highlighted several “shortcomings” of the existing city form of Kyiv. The city fabric and the location of industrial plants within it were chaotic; the location of industrial enterprises adjacent to residential areas was problematic, causing environmental hazards; the city’s population was itself overly dense 54 ; transportation connections and road capacity were weak 55 ; the existing utility system of electricity and water was poor; and there was a lack of green areas and park space, with existing green areas being in poor condition. 56
Responding to these perceived shortcomings, the 1936 general plan provided a response and a solution through a new physical plan for Kyiv (Figure 3). The plan constituted a substantial reorganization of the city’s physical structure in terms of land use separation, proposals for new industrial facilities, density shifts, transportation frameworks, 57 city utilities, and open space provision and distribution. In terms of land use, the 1936 plan established city zoning districts, organized as industrial, dwelling, public and administrative, office, trade, and entertainment. 58 Industry was foundationally reorganized, with new plants located in discrete industrial districts instead of scattered within the existing city, as before. The plan proposed relocation of existing industrial plants from the city center and high-density residential areas to these newly created industrial districts, many of which were at the city outskirts. Initiating an agenda for housing reform that would endure throughout the Soviet era, the plan proposed decreasing the city’s residential density from 800 people per hectare to 400 people per hectare. The grandest conception of the plan was in its proclamation of Kyiv as a “Garden City,” composed of inner and outer city green areas with parks, boulevards, dachas, garden squares, green buffer zones between industrial areas and dwellings, and even the landscaping of industrial territories (Figures 4 and 5).

Main sheet, general plan of 1936. Source: Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine.

Green space plan drawings in the 1936 general plan, showing the external green belt of Kyiv. Green areas inside city fabric denote parks and gardens. Above: Scheme published in Socialist Kyiv, n.1, 1936. Below: Scheme from the general plan of 1936. Source: Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine.

The general plan of 1936. Red lines show road network projected for subsequent ten to fifteen years, and large red area on the left bank shows a designated new city district. Source: General Plan of 1936, Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine.
Kyiv’s 1936 plan, while created within the highly hermetic confines of the Stalinist Soviet Union, shows clear analogies to contemporary plans being proposed for capitalist cities in the United States and Great Britain. 59 1936 general plan ideas like enlarged roadways, segregated land uses, lower-density residential areas, and greenbelts are consistent with the ideals of planners like Patrick Abercrombie, 60 John Nolen, 61 and Clarence Stein. 62 While professional contacts between capitalist planners and Ukraine’s planners were unlikely, the conceptual links between plan ideas are clear. Today, this first general plan for Kyiv is held in esteem by contemporary scholars, who have deemed the plan to be beautiful and ambitious, if sadly underrealized. For instance, architect B. Erophalov observed that “from the architectural point of view the general plan has absolutist and classicist intentions, [but these intentions] turned out to be realized only to a small extent.” 63 Some of the 1936 general plan’s implementation difficulties may have related to the difficult, hilly site of historic Kyiv as well as to the city’s topographical incompatibility with Soviet planning standards, which preferred tabula rasa, expansive locations.
The plan authors seemed to hold a paradoxical position about the value of Kyiv’s hilly landscape. Principal plan author Khaustov stated that Kyiv’s scenery was an important value, but at the same time, that this topography was the biggest obstacle for the city’s development: The capital of Ukraine is located in an extremely picturesque but also very complex terrain in terms of relief. This scenery is the biggest lure of Kyiv … [but] there are natural obstacles for city development. There are [the] Dnieper [River], Kyiv hills, [and] areas with high level of groundwater. The Lybid valley
64
is an obstacle for city development too, and calls for construction work and earthworks.
65
Soviet Kyiv’s Industrial Districts and Kyiv’s General Plans
In 1935, Kyiv had 150 state enterprises and almost as many handicraft enterprises and other organizations. These industries employed about 77,000 people, of whom about 56,000 were workers 66 (Figure 6). The city had nine industrial districts in total. These districts each contained industrial enterprises of mainly one type of production and occupied 870 hectares of the city’s territory in total. 67

Past and projected statistics for enterprises and laborers as shown in general plans of 1936 and 1947 (diagram by authors).
The 1936 general plan comprehensively examined the condition of Kyiv’s industrial districts as they existed in 1935. Judging by the number of its industrial enterprises, Kyiv’s Central District was a bustling area. The district had twenty-four industrial enterprises, crowded onto only eight hectares. However, most industry in Kyiv was located in a variety of other industrial areas located at the city periphery, almost all on the right bank adjacent to the historic center (Table 1). In 1935, on the comparatively underdeveloped left bank of the city in the Darnytskyy district, 370 hectares were already occupied or designated for industrial construction. The vast scale of Darnytskyy, larger than Kyiv’s other industrial districts combined, reflected the scale of industrial development possible in this as-yet underbuilt, yet highly accessible, area of the city. In the north part of Kyiv along the Dnipro, the Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district and Priorka districts had the largest number of industrial enterprises, fifty-one in all, occupying 128 hectares. The 1936 general plan projected this district to have a projected 300 hectares, which would have made it the second largest industrial area on the right bank and the third largest industrial district in the city. 68 Even before the 1936 general plan was issued, the Kurenivskyy district possessed important enterprises like the Kyiv Shipbuilding Shipyard and Ship Repair Plant, the Lenin Forge, 69 and the Kyiv Leather Factory. The 1936 general plan located additional important industries there by transferring existing enterprises from the city center to new facilities in the district. The 1936 general plan also provided a detail plan of Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district principally authored by N. Gelstein, and a project for reconstruction of Kyiv’s river port that we will examine further below (Figure 7). 70

The General plan for the reconstruction of the Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district from general plan of 1936. Much of this projected reconstruction was not implemented. Source: Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine.
Industrial districts in the 1936 general plan
Industrial development was a priority of the Soviet Union’s five-year plans: as Vice-Chairman of State Planning Grigoriy Grinko stated, “the pivotal part of the [first] entire Five-Year Plan [is to] make considerable progress in the conversion of the Soviet Union from a primarily agrarian to a predominantly industrial country.” 71 Accordingly, in Kyiv’s 1936 general plan, construction of housing, roads, and utility networks were all subordinate to acceleration of Kyiv’s industrialization. The 1936 general plan organized and concentrated Kyiv’s industrial enterprises in six districts, the scale of which was substantially larger than the existing industrial districts of 1935. The delineation of some of these districts even required expanding the city’s municipal limits. Six districts for industrial enterprises were proposed in the plan (Figure 8 and Table 2). The plan also proposed four additional, principally residential districts. Today, three of the six 1936 industrial districts—Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy, Telychansko-Korchevatyy, and Darnytskyy—are the largest in Kyiv. Although the form of these districts is not identical to that proposed in the plan, their scale today shows the 1936 general plan’s substantial influence on industrial development.

Diagram of industrial enterprise locations according to the general plan of 1936 and status of implementation (diagram by authors).
List of Industrial Districts and Enterprises in 1936 General Plan.
Note: Map of districts and enterprises is in Figure 9.
The scale of the plan’s projected industrial districts, shown in Figure 8, was ambitious. The largest industrial zone in the city, on the lightly occupied Left Bank, would be the conjoined Darnytskyy and Nikolsko-Brovarsky districts, together comprising 700 hectares. On the right bank adjacent to the old city, the planners proposed the largest single district of all, Telychansko-Korchuvatyy with 400 hectares, for hazardous activities such as woodworking, oil and gas plants. The Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district, also on the right bank, was designated for chemical and light manufacturing enterprises on 300 hectares. Part of another district on the right bank was designated for 78 hectares of machine-building enterprises that were to be moved from the city center, while yet another district projected 65 hectares for industrial needs.
Ultimately, the 1936 plan nearly doubled the area dedicated to industry in Kyiv, from 870 to 1,620 hectares. Almost 95 percent of the city’s industrial enterprises were to be located in the six districts proposed in the plan. 72 This wholesale centralization and aggregation of Kyiv’s dispersed industrial activity was to be achieved by the tripartite strategy of constructing new industry within the plan’s six designated industrial districts, the transferring of industrial enterprises from other districts that could be redeveloped, the transferring of additional enterprises beyond the city limits entirely, and eliminating entire smaller industrial districts adjacent to residential neighborhoods, thereby permitting those neighborhoods’ expansion.
The Hlybochytsko-Lukyanivska industrial district on the right bank was a typical example of such consolidation. This smaller industrial district of 8.9 hectares was proposed to be eliminated due to its “unacceptably adverse effects” on the adjoining residential areas. 73 The 1936 plan likewise proposed two other right-bank industrial districts for elimination as well. Overall, the 1936 general plan projected that during the third five-year Plan, foreseen for 1938–1943, that thirty-eight new industrial enterprises would be constructed and that forty to forty-six enterprises would be removed from the central part of the city. Ultimately, the 1936 plan projected a total of forty-four industrial districts in Kyiv, thirty-eight of which were new, and six of which were already existing.
Detail plans in the 1936 general plan
The drawings that comprised the graphic content of the 1936 general plan contained several detail or area plans showing projected urban development for selected city districts. 74 These included a general plan for reconstruction of the Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district along the Dnipro riverbank in the central city, with a river port reconstruction project as a subarea and a plan for the left bank Darnytskyy/Nikolsko-Brovarskyy districts. The general plan also provided projects and schematic plans for three other districts. 75 Below, we briefly describe industrial district detail plans for two of the largest industrial districts, Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy and Darnytskyy/Nikolsko-Brovarskyy, highlighting the principal propositions of these “subplans.”
The Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district, formerly a mixed-use residential, commercial, and industrial area, was to be reorganized along segregated land-use patterns (Figure 7). The general plan for the reconstruction of this district envisioned a functional division of the entire territory into discrete zones: an industrial main zone, a railway transport zone, a cultural services network, and “orderly” greenfield sites and water spaces. According to this general plan, the industrial zone was to be concentrated along a major street. These industries were separated from residential areas by a railway dam, which also protected this low-lying area from floods. Petrivka, the territory in the port area together with the Rybalsky Peninsula, was projected by the general plan to be, together with the Kurenivka area, the main industrial center of the district.
The Darnytskyy and Nikolsko-Brovarskyy industrial districts, as previously noted, occupied a large area of the Dnipro left bank. This area was projected by the general plan to become one of the most developed districts of the city. In 1936, the district already had substantial activity, according to the general plan; there was a carriage repair plant already under construction, a meat-packing plant being reconstructed, a wood-chemical industry expanding, and a large-scale railway junction being created. The relatively flat landscape, sandy soil, and a wooded, green area available for adjacent residential construction made the area appealing for additional growth. The 1936 plan projected the construction of three industrial plants in these districts: a rubber plant of forty hectares, a linen factory or complex of textile enterprises (forty hectares), and the “Darnytskyy” carriage repair plant. Of the three planned enterprises, only the Darnytskyy carriage repair plant was brought into operation. Darnytskyy would become the largest enterprise in Kyiv with a workforce of 9,000 people, but the construction of the other enterprises never occurred.
The General Plan of 1947
After the devastation caused by the Nazi invasion and occupation of Ukraine during World War II, Kyiv’s industry was restored within four years, and new branches of industry also made their appearance. In 1947, a postwar general plan was issued that projected the city’s development up to 1960–1965. This plan (Figure 9) strengthened the city’s role as an industrial center, an effort that had begun under the first general plan of 1936. The 1947 plan project team consisted of Alexander Vlasov, Boris Priymak, and I. I. Malozyomov among others. These planners proclaimed the new, rebuilt Kyiv to be a complex of industrial and transport enterprises, residential areas, a rebuilt and heavily monumental city center, and widened street arteries. 76 The 1947 general plan stated that its agenda for industrial enterprise development was motivated by population growth, by the necessity to increase production capacity, and by a desire to improve the environmental situation in the city. In response to these goals, the plan projected an ambitious industrial agenda to remove harmful industrial enterprises to areas outside the city and to relocate several former inner-city enterprises in five consolidated industrial districts (down from six districts in the 1936 general plan). These districts would also house additional enterprises (Table 1).

General “scheme” for 1947 general plan. Source: http://genplan.kiev.ua/ist.htm.
To some extent, the 1947 general plan corrected constructed elements of the 1936 general plan that had become obsolete or problematic. In an era of rapid population growth, industry that had been at the periphery of Kyiv a decade earlier was now enveloped by rapid metropolitan growth, motivating its removal in order to permit future growth of those industries in the event of expansion, and the separation of industrial land uses from residential areas. For example, the foundry shop of the Gorky machine-tool works, projected by the general plan of 1936 and then constructed, was projected by the 1947 general plan to be relocated from its initial site to an area outside the city. Other proposed industrial relocations doubtless referred to pre-1936 industrial districts whose previously recommended removal had not yet been implemented by the time of World War II. Overall, the 1947 plan proposed that thirty-one industrial enterprises relocate far from residential areas. 77 This second wave of relocated factories, many of which had been created only within the previous ten years, illustrated the difficulty of planning for heavy industry in a rapidly growing city.
Consistent with Soviet concepts of aggregation and efficiency, the 1947 general plan reduced industrial production in Kyiv to five districts. Among these were the three large districts mentioned earlier, Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy, Nikolsko-Brovarskyy, and Darnytskyy, plus two others (Table 1). Four of these industrial districts remained from the 1936 general plan, while a fifth district, Demyivka, was newly designated.
Within these districts, new industrial areas were mostly located along the Dnipro river and along Brest-Litovsk Avenue (renamed Peremohy or “Victory” Boulevard in 1985). Brest-Litovsk is a major avenue leading westward from Kyiv, eventually arriving in Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine. Given the southward flow of the Dnipro and the existence of river pollution, the 1947 plan was sensitive to the placement of industrial enterprises along the river, as emphasized by a team of experts of the general plan of 1947 in their official report. 78 The possibility of industrial waste flowing past the city made the location of additional industrial areas on the north of the city undesirable, and instead encouraged the implementation of new industrial areas toward the south of the city (i.e., downstream). Ultimately, an industrial area projected to the north of the existing Lenin Forge works, in the Podil neighborhood near the city center, was not constructed. This area was occupied instead by the large-scale Obolon rayon, or residential district, constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. To the south of the city center, the Telychansko-Korchuvatyy industrial district was constructed, growing rapidly (eventually more than doubling in size) following the issuance of the 1947 general plan. Today, this is one of the largest industrial districts in Kyiv.
Kyiv’s Industrial Districts Today: Tales of Transformation
How have Kyiv’s industrial districts transformed since their formation during the early industrialization of the Soviet Union? In particular, how have these districts transformed since the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union in 1991, and the development of a capitalist economy in what was a wholly socialist city? Across Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, transformation of industry has been dramatic. The imposition of borders in what was formerly a unified command economy, and the imposition of market logic in what was formerly a planned economic system, has resulted in the diminution, obsolescence, and disappearance of many industries—a form of economic shock analogous to that which occurred in the United States and Northern Europe beginning in the 1970s. Other Ukrainian industrial enterprises have survived, though with often reduced activity. This overall decline in industrial economies has been devastating for smaller Ukrainian cities, many of which live today with substantial brownfields and large, mostly abandoned industrial plants. However, this transformation has been less drastic in large cities like Kyiv, where economic recovery has been more rapid since 1991. Instead, Kyiv presents a mixed picture, with some industrial sites abandoned and closed, some continuing to function, and some partially or wholly redeveloped.
In this section of the study, we provide short portraits of five industrial districts within Kyiv. These five were mentioned frequently in the professional and popular press of the 1930s and were highlighted in the explanatory report of the 1936 general plan. The five districts are the following: the Lenin Forge works (two locations), in the Halitskyy district and Petrivsko-Kurenivskyy district, the Bilshovyk works and the Gorky machine-tool works in the Zhovtnevo-Svyatoshinskyy district, and the Darnytsky car repair factory (DCRF) and complex of textile factories in the Darnytskyy district. All five represent implemented industrial facilities from the 1936 plan, except for Darnytsky’s complex of textile factories, 79 and all five are machine industry enterprises. Understanding the trajectory of the physical history of these industrial works provides a window on the industrial transformation of Kyiv during the tumultuous eighty-plus years that followed the issuance of the 1936 general plan (Table 3).
Major Works in the General Plan of 1936 and Their Status Today (2019).
Source: Authors’ field survey.
Bilshovyk: from industrial plant to pioneering shopping mall
In 1930, reconstruction commenced on a prerevolutionary machine tool plant located along the Brest-Litovsk highway. The Bilshovyk (Bolshevik) works were first established by Czech businessmen Yakov Greter and Yosyp Crivanenko in 1882. The reconstruction proposed the doubling of the plan’s industrial area and the shifting of production from repairing machines to mechanical engineering. 80 Like other prerevolutionary industrial enterprises in Kyiv, the czarist-era factory that existed in 1930 was actively criticized by Soviet architects. In Socialist Kyiv, a propagandistic journal of that time, an aerial sketch from 1916 represented the factory in a semi-ruined condition. Author Gutman 81 argued that workers in Bilshovyk endured unacceptable conditions in narrow, muddy, and dark industrial pavilions. Contrary to the negatively portrayed prerevolutionary plant (Figure 10), Soviet architects designed a model factory at Bilshovyk which could not only produce high-quality machine tools but also symbolize socialist achievement for the working class. Additionally, based on the 1936 general plan’s general concept of increasing green areas and of building a “Garden City” in Kyiv, the project team realized a model recreation area at the Bilshovyk plant whose design was in accord with Soviet ideals of a socialist city (Figures 11 and 12).

Representations of old and new industry: the prerevolutionary in 1916 (left) and Soviet (right) Greater and Crivanenko plant in 1929. Source: 1,2: Horhot, A., Arhitektura i blagoustrojstvo promyslennyh predpriatij. Kiev: Izd-vo akademii arhitektury Ukrainskoj SSR (1953).

Images of the yard, or green space, in the Lenin Forge II. Source: Photo-album “Lenin Forge Plant. Kyiv 1896-1946”. Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine.

The Bilshovyk Plant yard in two periods. Left: Bilshovyk yard in the thirties. Right: Predecessor of Lenin Forge I, Donat Lipovsky and Co, 1900. Source: 1: Journal “Socialist Kyiv” (1930); 2: Iyevleva, V. (2008).
Following Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the Bilshovyk plant began to decline. Soon the severely troubled enterprise was privatized and tried to survive by producing rubber, processing plastics, recycling used tires, and renting empty pavilions for storage and small enterprises. But Bilshovyk’s biggest industry in the capitalist era would come from consumption, not production. In the second half of the first decade of the 2000s, a small portion—five hectares—of Bilshovyk’s thirty-five overall hectares were transformed into a shopping center, also called “Bilshovyk” (Figures 13 and 14). What was once a convenient area for workers, adjacent to a Metro line and surrounded by residential areas, became a convenient location for shoppers.

The boundary of the Bilshovyk plant over time.

Spatial evolution of the Bilshovyk plant area, 1925–2017 (figure by authors). Left, from top: the fragment of the general plan 1936; photo from 1940; orthophoto from 2000; photo from 2000; orthophoto from 2017; photo from 2017. Source (from left top to bottom right): Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine; pastv.vu; google map; https://en.wikipedia.org/; google map; https://en.wikipedia.org/.
The Bilshovyk transformation is comparatively modest: the majority of the Soviet industrial plant survives, with low-level activity continuing and most industrial structures still (2019) intact. The Bilshovyk mall occupies one corner of the site. There, two industrial pavilions have been repurposed, with two levels of shopping added to the interior, and parking and loading added on a basement level. Industrial imagery, and the site’s Soviet history and propagandistic name, became, for a time, symbols for capitalist exploitation by the private owners of the site. In 2017, the mall’s name was changed to “Kosmopolit” (“Cosmopolite”) to comply with Ukraine’s 2014 “Decommunization” laws, passed in the wake of the Maidan revolution’s expulsion of a corrupt, Russia-friendly regime. The mall’s owners also capitalized on the site’s convenient location by adding a residential slab and office tower adjacent to the transformed industrial pavilions along a principal street.
The Bilshovyk/Kosmopolit mall has become a popular place for the middle class in Kyiv for shopping and entertainment, in part thanks to the fact that this transformation was one of the first, if not the first, such transformations of an industrial facility in Kyiv. 82 Ironically, though the site’s Soviet past is (or was, until 2017) celebrated through imagery, the continuing existence of industrial production on the site, albeit at a low level, is not celebrated and is even made invisible by the segregation of the highly visible portion of the site dedicated to consumption. Whatever one thinks of a “Bolshevik” shopping mall, the paradox does illustrate a certain ironic dimension of Ukraine and the larger post-Soviet sphere’s process of recovery from state socialism. The possession of the name did, for a while, provide a limited lens on the past. Yet shopping center visitors, according to a 2012 study, were unaware of the current situation of a still working plant nearby, 83 and an art museum placed in the shopping mall by the private owners was named after Greter and Krivanenko, the prerevolutionary plant founders. Thus, Bilshovyk presents a paradoxical window on Kyiv’s industrial past. As of 2019, much of its physical form survives, albeit nearly invisible, while the Soviet past and prerevolutionary farther past are, or were until recently, celebrated nostalgically, with little critical perspective.
Lenin Forge I, Voksal: Industry to offices at the “city gate”
Kyiv’s railway station, or Voksal in Russian, is a typically monumental group of structures constructed in the bed of the Lybid, a still existing, though sadly reduced, stream that flows into the Dnipro south of central Kyiv. The valley permitted easy construction of rail lines, providing the nearest proximity to the city center on Kreschatyka Street, and industry was quick to follow. An initial enterprise (Donat Lipovsky and Company) was established on a historically residential site called Zverinetsk, and in 1895, this enterprise relocated to a site directly adjoining the railway station, at the corner of Zhylianska and Symona Petlyury streets (Figure 15). The new industrial complex was perhaps designed by Vladislav Horodetsky, 84 arguably the greatest and best known of Kyiv’s many outstanding architects of the turn of the century. Prior to the revolution, Donat Lipovsky, which would later be renamed Lenin Forge (Leninska Kuznya), was already one of the biggest mechanical and metalworking factories in the city. 85

The boundary of the Lenin Forge I over time.
Like Bilshovyk, the first Lenin Forge was subject to architectural and ideological critiques of the prerevolutionary factory from the 1936 general plan committee, and like that factory, it was also reconstructed during the first five-year-plan. In the Soviet era, the territory of the plant was expanded at least three times. Lenin Forge also contributed to the transformation of Kyiv into a “garden city”: a square with flowerbeds and fountains was created on the plant’s grounds 86 (Figure 12).
After Kyiv again became Ukraine’s capital in 1932, Soviet planners raised a question of the Lenin Forge’s architectural quality for two reasons: first, at that time the plant was one of the eleven largest plants of the Soviet Union, and it was therefore ideologically necessary for the plant to represent socialist industry; second, the plant’s prominent location adjacent to the railway station required the plant to have a contemporary appearance. According to publications of the time, the reconstructed pavilion would require a “cultural appearance”; in other words, an ability of the complex to inspire workers to labor and for the plant to symbolize the association of this labor with human rights and to express the honor of labor. 87 Moreover, the design team in charge of reconstructing the plan projected an industrial square, also called Lenin Forge, that would connect to the Voksal’na (railway) square, adjacent to the station. Lenin Forge was thus the first industrial complex whose design attempted an integration of the industrial plant with its surrounding city environment, thereby representing a new city function—the industrial center—at Kyiv’s industrial-era “city gate” (Figure 16). Unfortunately for this integrative potential, the complex of new administrative buildings and Lenin Forge industrial square, all designed by the architect V. Onashchenko, was not realized.

Lenin Forge I on Zhilyanskaya street. Left: 1934 project for reconstructing the railway station square by architect Homenko. Top right: [1936] Project for the boiler department by architect E. Yakhnenko. Bottom Right: [1936] project of the administrative department. Source (from top left to bottom right): Lypkes. I., Construction of industry in Kyiv (Promyslove budivnitstvo v Kyive), 1934; others: Journal “Socialist Kyiv,” 1936, no. 1.
Today, Lenin Forge is no longer a symbolic gateway to the industrial era nor does the physical form of the Forge convey any sense of a complex whose design was once so important as to symbolize Soviet industry not just to Kyiv but to the entire Union. The Forge has shrunk in area both through conversion of industrial buildings and through demolition. What was perhaps visually the most important symbolic building, a low pavilion located along Symona Petlyury street leading to the railway station, was demolished midway through 2001. Vacant for almost a decade, the site was eventually occupied by a parking lot, permitting access both to rehabilitated structures behind and for a new bus terminal. Other portions of the Forge, opening onto the busy streets of Starovokzalnaya and Vokzalnaya, were spontaneously transformed into shops, cafes, warehouses, and offices. Some structures inside of the Lenin Forge site are still dedicated to production, and these structures have been designated local monuments needing to be preserved by the cadastral plan of Kyiv (Figures 17 and 18). If this preservation ordinance holds, at least some portions of Kyiv’s industrial gateway will remain to mark the existence of this once-significant complex. But the symbolic potential of the first Lenin Forge has been, at least for the moment, sadly diminished, replaced by the shops and parking lots of capitalist Kyiv.

The Lenin Forge I in four periods, 1925–2017. Like the Bilshovyk plant, the area dedicated to industrial activities is shrinking. Top left to bottom right: the map from 1925; photos from 1930; the general plan for the plan from1939; photo of the model; topo plan from 1980; photo from pavilion in 1980; orthophoto from 2017; photo of prerevolution pavilion remain up today. Source (top left to bottom right): “Vatra” publish company in Ukraine; map; pastvu.com; Kyiv State Archive; Photo-album “Lenin Forge Plant. Kyiv 1896–1946. Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine; unknown; Photo-album “Lenin Forge Plant. Kyiv 1896-1946. Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine; google map; wikimedia.

Photographs of Lenin Forge I in 2018. Source: Authors.
Lenin Forge II, Rybalsky Island: Twenty-first-century Kyiv’s development frontier
In the Dnipro River just adjacent to the Podil neighborhood is a large peninsula, once an island, called Rybalsky Ostriv (Fisherman’s Island). Rybalsky was shaped in part by the course of a right-bank tributary of the Dnipro called the Pochayna, which got its name from a fishing village located nearby in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the beginning of World War I, the island was still undeveloped. Industrial development on this peninsula, creating the complex that would be called the second Lenin Forge, commenced in 1928. The Lenin Forge II site would be one of the first to symbolize the transformation of Kyiv from a trade center to an industrial node of the entire Union. 88 This enterprise would become famous not only thanks to its rapid development during the first five-year plan, thus symbolizing the success of the industrial command economy, but also by the achievements of its scientific and experimental laboratories. Similar to the Bolshevik Works, the Rybalsky Lenin Forge II developed improved engineering solutions related to the maritime industry. For instance, in 1931, an innovation led by Professor Evgeny Paton improved fastening mechanisms for ships produced at the plant (Figure 19).

Spatial evolution of the Lenin Forge II plant area, 1936–2017. Figure by authors.
The Lenin Forge plant was large and diverse, including shipyards, housing, administrative buildings, and several large sheds utilized for repair and construction. Connectivity to the island was poor until the 1960s, when a pedestrian bridge was constructed from Podil to the Forge site. This bridge carried thousands of workers each day by foot from Podil to Lenin Forge. Prior to the 1960s, the island’s urban pattern consisted of a combination of industrial and dwelling zones. The dwelling zone, with working-class quarters and barracks was located only seventy-five meters or so from the industrial zone, without the typically prescribed spatial buffer. These dwelling quarters with five story structures, smaller residence hall dormitories, and one-story barracks, together with former cultural and administrative buildings, remain standing today and unlike the former industrial structures are still in active use.
In 1994, the Lenin Forge II was privatized (https://zkr.com.ua), causing a decline in its production. Today, the site is a paradigmatic gritty, postindustrial waterfront landscape. The site is divided among several private owners, and connectivity to the city is once again poor due to the closure of the pedestrian bridge, as well as to construction of a waterfront highway in the early 2000s (Neberezno Rybalsky Street) that severed the Forge’s connection to the Dnieper. Lenin Forge’s accessibility is currently (2019) evolving. A long-delayed trans-Dnipro bridge was originally projected to continue as a limited-access highway across much of northern Podil. It would have further destroyed the districts’ connection to the Pochayna inlet. Instead, this bridge connector has been reconfigured to connect to Podil’s central Boulevard (Nyzhnii Val Street), thereby demolishing the stub of the Soviet-constructed pedestrian bridge. In its semi-abandoned state, the pedestrian bridge had become a popular gathering place for Podil’s informal artistic culture. With the highway completed, Podil will be “better connected”—but at a high price for pedestrian connectivity to Rybalsky Island.
Despite connectivity barriers, the Rybalsky Lenin Forge site is attractive to developers because of its proximity to the city center and to the Podil historic district. The large size of the site, around ninety hectares, adds to its attractiveness. Kyiv’s developer-friendly 2025 general plan has designated Lenin Forge for residential development in the form of towers and courtyard blocks. None of the industrial pavilions, almost all of which are surviving as of 2019, are projected to remain. Thus, Kyiv’s most significant and visible industrial waterfront site, with its monumental buildings, profound interior spaces, and diverse outdoor spaces, is slated to become another high-rise “business class” district. Dirigiste planning, which directed the creation of the second Lenin Forge, is now projecting the Forge’s erasure from the city landscape and from the people’s memory (Figure 20).

The Lenin Forge II in four periods, 1936–future. The plant is projected to be nearly totally cleared for new development. Source (top left to bottom right): the fragment of the general plan for Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy in 1936; orthophoto from 1934; photo of main alley on the plant from 1940; orthophoto from 2017; aerial photo from 2018; the project of the General plan in 2017; the visualization of the project. Source (top left to bottom right): Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine; http://starkiev.com/; Photo-album “Lenin Forge Plant. Kyiv 1896–1946. Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine google map; Egor Shtefan photo; https://buro.page/; https://buro.page/.
DCRF: A plant with an “exemplary” workers’ neighborhood
In order to implement their most ambitious industrial and residential projects, Soviet planners in Kyiv chose the flat, unbuilt left bank of the Dnipro, already linked to the right bank of the city in the 1930s by two railway bridges. 89 According to their ambitious plans, the largest textile complex in the Soviet Union 90 and the Darnytskyy (train) car repair factory (DCRF) should be located in this area. While the textile complex would remain unbuilt, the DCRF had been 90 percent completed through overtime labor in only three years prior to the 1936 general plan publication. 91 Today, the DCRF is part of the Darnytskyy industrial region, one of the three largest “modern” industrial districts in the city according to the 2020 general plan.
The general plan of 1936 projected both a large plant and a parallel residential district to be located next to the plant and accommodating around 250,000 people. 92 The district was constructed as a “city within a city,” with a full range of community facilities, connecting infrastructure (tram), and even a local newspaper. The plant was badly damaged in the war, and the postwar reconstructed plant did not retain much of its original structure (Figure 21). However, most of the residential district was preserved. The housing group has both historical and architectural value, consisting of several types of prewar and postwar housing models, including low-rise single-unit housing, low-rise multiunit housing, and four-story dwelling “panel buildings” of prefabricated elements. 93

The Darnytskyy car repair factory in three periods, 1943–2017. The plant has grown tremendously over time and is today the largest industrial district in Kyiv. It is comparatively intact due to its remote location on the left bank. From left top to bottom right: orthophoto from 1934; project of the plant in 1934; topo plan from 1980; photo of the yard in 1936; orthophoto from 2017; photo of the plant from tram stop in 2019. Source (from left top to bottom right): http://starkiev.com/; Journal “Socialist Kyiv”, 1934, nos. 1–2. с.23; unknown; Journal “Socialist Kyiv”, 1936; google map; photo by authors.
The DCRF, as constructed by Soviet planners, played an extensive role in the industrial development of the left bank. 94 The extensive plant established the validity of future development of this bank of the Dnipro (Figure 22) that would occur in this area from the 1960s onward. Today, the DCRF is operated by the State Administration of Railway Transport of Ukraine or “Ukrzaliznytsia” (https://www.uz.gov.ua/en/). The works itself and most of the built environment adjacent to it retain their Soviet-era appearance. Community facilities such as the workers’ tram station for the workers, the main public square in front of the works, a cultural center, schools and kindergartens, a water tower, and buildings for workers along Almatynska, the main street of the district, all remain intact. While the general atmosphere has a strong connection to the past, today differences are visible through small design elements like street vendors, new cars, and contemporary retail on the first floor of buildings. In the public square of the works, the Socialist context is dialectic: the former Lenin monument has a Soviet-era information plate, an artifact from the past whose 1934-era details are being slowly overtaken by Kyiv’s harsh weather.

Spatial evolution of the Darnytskyy car repair factory plant area, 1943–2017 (figure by authors).
Gorky machine-tool works: Catalyst for a new Soviet city district
On the western edge of Kyiv along the Brest-Litovsk highway, a complete workers’ neighborhood was constructed at the “Factory of automatic machines” in accord with the general plan of 1936 (Figure 23). The new plant and its residential area were placed on 130 hectares, converting the city periphery into a new city district. The two factory “working villages,” at DCRF and at the Gorky machine-tool works, were the first and most prominent examples of industrial plant residential areas, and both have remained exemplars of this Soviet settlement type in Kyiv to the present day (Ievleva, 2008). The social pattern for industrial city development, whereby a new industrial enterprise became a catalyst for an entire city district development, was established in Kyiv at these two plants. The Gorky machine-tool works was intended to transform the city land around the plant, formerly a village, and at the same time expand the city’s fringe through industry. The importance of Gorky’s implementation 95 can be seen in the publication of a separate facilities plan for the Zhovtnevo-Svyatoshinskyy District within the general plan of 1936. Placement of this significant industrial enterprise firmly established Brest-Litovsk as a major urban axis of Kyiv, an exemplar of the Socialist industrial economy (Figure 24).

The Gorky machine-tool works in three periods, 1943–2017. The plant is currently being redeveloped for high-rise apartment buildings. From top left to bottom right: orthophoto from 1943; project in 1936; orthophoto from 1980; photo of pavilion; orthophoto 2017; photo from alley. Source (from top left to bottom right): http://starkiev.com/; Journal “Socialist Kyiv”, 1935: nos. 11–12; Pat Kyivproekt archive; unknown; google map; photo by author from 2018.

The boundary of the Gorky machine-tool works over time (figure by authors).
The Gorky works were organized by a clear spatial planning structure: a central allée of trees and pedestrian walkways, a sort of industrial boulevard along which were arrayed the plant’s pavilions. This allée, most of which survives today, provides a pleasant pedestrian experience, and the entire ensemble, including the central allée, the park landscaped with fountains and ornamental plantings, and the remaining cultural and administrative buildings convey the unique status of the factory during early Soviet industrialization. Some buildings, including the industrial pavilions, have decorated facades on their allée frontages, while more minimalist architecture is visible at these works’ back. The ornament indicates the conventional architectural approach of the first five-year plans, whereas in those structures constructed after World War II, decorations of industrial facades were subject to cutbacks.
Unlike DCRF, industrial production at the Gorky machine-tool works has collapsed in the post-Socialist era. The Brest-Litovsk road is convenient to central Kyiv, and the adjacent metro line, just a few stops from the city center, has made the area desirable for the high-rise development that was first brought to Kyiv by Soviet planners. The Gorky works are undergoing a range of spatial transformations, ranging from casual adaptation with small businesses to complete demolition for China-style “luxury” residential complexes. The large pavilions once used for in-line assembly are being demolished, and a large part of the plant adjacent to the Nyvky metro station has already vanished, with new high-rise buildings appearing on the site. 96 The author’s site visit to the remaining industrial pavilions indicated that all the remaining structures are available for rent. Little of the original industrial activity would therefore seem to have survived.
The different building typologies of the early factory, ranging from large industrial pavilions to administrative buildings, allow for different types of postindustrial appropriation. The former industrial pavilions are popular for warehouses and automobile storage and administrative buildings for small and medium office space. A large banner in the entrance zone [Summer 2019] advertises a space for rent ranging from 30 up to 600 square meters. Of the once-great production capacity of the works, only two small pavilions are still operating: a secondary pavilion for metalwork and a heat treatment workshop are located on the site far from the metro station. According to a local worker, these small shops do work for other enterprises and are not part of the original Gorky works.
In the office of the managing company that occupies the former main administrative building of the Gorky works, a poster with architectural concepts for future changes is present. The architectural proposal would demolish everything from the past. The generically designed high-rises already constructed demonstrate little relationship to the site, an unfortunate portent for the future of this significant complex.
Toward a Future for Kyiv’s Soviet-era Industrial Districts
The above site profiles demonstrate the varying experiences of Kyiv’s Soviet-era industrial districts since Ukrainian independence (Figure 25 and Table 4). In general, Kyiv’s industry is a significant legacy of Soviet economic planning, city development, and urban design. The city was lightly industrialized prior to the Russian revolution, but the crash industrialization of the early five-year plans, and the heavy emphasis placed on industrialization in the postwar era, left Kyiv in 1991 with a wide geographical and functional range of industrial facilities. Industry was placed by Soviet planners on the Dnieper riverbank both north and south of the city and on the newly constructed left bank and in the interior area of the right bank. In other words, Kyiv, in 1910 a historic trading city, was by 1990 ringed and surrounded by heavy industry on all sides.

The diverse fates of Kyiv’s industrial legacy: demolition, ruin, renovation, temporary use, and continued industrial activity. While not every industrial area was surveyed for this study, industry does continue within a large area of Kyiv’s historic industrial districts. Figure by authors. See also Table 4.
Kyiv’s Industrial Legacy: Status Today (2017).
Source: Authors’ field survey.
This industrial legacy clearly presents both a burden and an opportunity in today’s capitalist, independent Ukraine. The transformations that the five profiled sites have experienced since 1991 demonstrate a range of outcomes, some intentional, some less so, that have only partially preserved to the present day (2019) the impressive physical legacy of the Soviet era. Collectively, both locations of the Lenin Forge, the Bilshovyk, the Gorky machine-tool, and the DCRF represent what we can consider as a range of conventional, or business-as-usual, development outcomes in today’s Ukraine. We term these outcomes business-as-usual both because they are consistent with larger urbanization and planning trends in the post-Soviet sphere 97 and because none of the environmental or architectural elements of the Soviet industrial legacy have yet been subject to formal preservation or planning policies intended to preserve or otherwise maintain their current activities, form, and architectural integrity.
The business-as-usual outcomes found in the five profiled sites can be understood as representing a spectrum along two different descriptive measures: level of economic activity, and survival of original Soviet-era structures, or architectural persistence. These two measures are not necessarily proportional or consistent; in other words, a high level of activity does not necessarily require survival of the original Soviet industrial structures nor does a low level of activity necessarily communicate that the original structures have disappeared. Kyiv’s industrial sites, represented by our profiles, represent a full sample of the interrelationship between economic activity and architectural persistence. At the same time, the profiled sites fall into different analytical categories, or assessments, that can be understood as a synthesis of the two descriptive measures. Table 5 below summarizes these descriptive measures and analytical categories for the five sites, which we then discuss in further detail.
Descriptive and Analytical Assessments of Five Profiled Kyiv Industrial Sites.
Given the economic dereliction that afflicted Ukraine following independence, one would not expect industrial sites with reduced activity located in the midst of a still-vibrant capital city to remain perfectly intact over a period of decades nor for the underused land and buildings on these sites to remain so. Instead, one would expect some version of the transformations that have occurred to postindustrial sites across the Western world in previous decades to have also occurred in Ukraine. As urban designers and planners have documented in surveys of postindustrial cities, 98 transformations typically include a mix of economic repurposing, survival of original industry, preservation of industrial structures, and demolition of industrial structures in favor of vacant speculative space or new construction for repurposed economic activities. The same range of activities is found in Kyiv’s industrial sites but in different proportions to that found in “typical” postindustrial cities like London, New York, Manchester, or Pittsburgh.
What are the unusual qualities of Kyiv’s industrial sites? Perhaps these sites’ most unusual quality is the relatively high level of continuance of industrial activity, and the low level of demolition and economic transformation, to have occurred by 2019. In other words, Kyiv’s industrial sites are still partially industrial both in form and in function; they have not yet made a full postindustrial transition, and many industries are still functioning there, despite privatization and in some cases the demise of the former large state-owned enterprises that once occupied the sites. This survival, or continuance, of industry is partially responsible for the high level of survival of original structures on all five of the sites profiled. Both continuance of structures and survival of industry are much more unusual in the context of Western European and American cities, where industrial uses have often departed entirely, or if remaining, have been rehoused in entirely new structures via redevelopment processes. 99
Kyiv, in other words, seems to represent a “slow” or fragmentary postindustrial transformation. 100 Understanding the reasons for this slow transformation transcends the limits of this study, but it is evident from surveys of other Ukrainian cities 101 that Kyiv’s situation is not inconsistent with that of other areas in Ukraine and, indeed, the rest of the former Soviet Union, where in many cases industrial plants survive even more intact, and with more continued activity, than in Kyiv. This slow transformation is also consistent with the relatively limited transformation of Soviet-era housing districts, almost all of which also survive in Kyiv in more or less intact, though deteriorated, form, to the present day.
There are other possible reasons for the high level of survival of Kyiv’s Soviet-era industrial plant. Soviet cities, including of course Kyiv, were not constructed according to market logics, and urban space therefore did not have the same value as in capitalist cities. This lack of a land market, combined with Soviet ideals of a ‘garden city’ and later of ideal residential design, produced large urban districts with substantial amounts of unoccupied, otherwise vacant space, even as it produced industrial areas whose spatial location within the city was unrelated to market logic. Soviet Kyiv’s vacant spaces, ranging from highway interchanges to metro station plazas to large “blank” areas in between ranges of housing towers and monumental ceremonial spaces in the city center, were readily available for infill development under capitalism, whether for office, residential, or retail functions.
Precisely such development is what occurred in the decades after independence. Such “blank” city spaces were infilled with small kiosks and eventually in many cases with new, high-rise residential buildings as well as shopping malls and office structures. It is conceivable that the widespread existence of such “infill” sites siphoned off market demand that might have otherwise have demanded industrial or postindustrial sites as a location for new construction. This conversion of postindustrial land has occurred in western European and American cities that had more limited space elsewhere for conversion. In Kyiv, one would expect under such an “abundant infill” scenario that once such sites were filled, that other “soft” sites, including postindustrial sites, would eventually be redeveloped. It is also possible that a low overall level of real-estate market activity in Kyiv postindependence translated to a low overall demand for market-led redevelopment of industrial sites. Certainly, Ukraine was a low-income country in the years after 1991, and income levels today (2019) are still well below income levels in western Europe.
Whatever the cause, replacement of Soviet-era industrial structures was comparatively limited on the five sites profiled. A few industrial structures on high-visibility, high-profile sites were demolished, as at the Lenin Forge I and Gorky, and a few others were repurposed, such as the periphery of Lenin Forge I and the southeast corner of Bilshovyk/Kosmopolit. Elsewhere, however, as at Lenin Forge II and Darnytsky, comparative remoteness or lack of market demand meant that industrial activity simply continued or that industrial structures were left vacant, more or less mothballed, waiting for future activity or redevelopment proposals to demolish and replace them. This process is what seems to be underway in the second Lenin Forge site, where the growing popularity of Kyiv’s waterfront, the occupation and development of more easily available waterfront sites, and the overall growth of the Kyiv economy are collectively leading to proposals for the near-complete redevelopment of the Forge. A similar process, perhaps more advanced due to the easier accessibility of the site, is underway at the former Gorky machine-tool works.
The preservation of Kyiv’s Soviet industrial structures, in other words, is far from assured. Whereas surviving industrial structures and districts in western Europe and America have persisted through conscious preservation or adaptive reuse, or more commonly, at least in the United States, have been demolished and redeveloped for economic development, industrial structures have persisted in Kyiv and by extension elsewhere in Ukraine through a process of slow, fragmentary postindustrial transformation, the continued existence of industrial enterprises, and through limited demand for redevelopment, in part through comparative inaccessibility. The sum of this processes is not quite benign neglect but may be thought of as a kind of “sleeping urbanism,” akin to those processes that have preserved more or less intact the entirety of Kyiv’s Soviet-era housing districts. That such sleeping urbanism will last forever is unlikely; even if the city never experiences China-level economic transformation, Kyiv may yet experience something akin to Moscow’s economic boom, where Soviet-era residential districts and industrial areas in the city center are both experiencing substantial levels of redevelopment.
It is therefore important to project alternative futures for Kyiv’s Soviet-era industrial districts and structures. This importance is twofold. In the first place, such alternative futures have value for industrial structures and district where there is currently, and for the foreseeable future, little viable economic activity. Such an alternative future might demonstrate the viability of these underused areas and activate these spaces and the spaces around them. Additionally, and equally importantly, alternative futures for Kyiv’s industrial spaces might forestall the imposition of conventional, business-as-usual solutions for prominent spaces currently under threat. New York City’s recent demolition of the near entirety of the Domino sugar factory on the Brooklyn waterfront for conventional high-density luxury apartment buildings indicates one potential future for Lenin Forge II, with its spectacular industrial pavilions and monumental, unique location at the edge of Rybalsky Island, and an almost guaranteed future for the Gorky plant.
But Kyiv also provides examples of alternative paths for industrial districts. In particular, bottom-up tactics are becoming increasingly viable as a means of developing urban space in Kyiv. The architectural quality, mythic history, and ruined beauty of Kyiv’s industrial spaces are stimuli rather than barriers to a new generation of creative, activist individuals and organizations in Kyiv. While it is widely accepted that bottom-up tactics and pop-up approaches are not a marginal, ephemeral trend but a fundamental alternative to conventional planning, 102 such approaches continue to be underappreciated and even illegal in Ukraine, and these approaches are therefore typically considered ineffective by the professional community and by private developers in the city. Below we examine three scenarios for reactivation of industrial districts and structures that bypass conventional approaches. The first scenario increases awareness of the value of ex-industrial landscapes; the second scenario meshes temporary occupation with cultural appropriation; and the third scenario involves the rehabilitation of buildings where a new function becomes a catalyst for industrial district changes and potentially for preservation of industrial heritage. We then provide a critical view of the alternative scenarios examined, understand their current shortcomings, if any, and then establish further recommendations for future alternative scenarios.
Increasing awareness of industrial heritage: Community mapping tool “Map Me Happy”
In Kyiv, three factors affect the demolition and abandonment of the city’s industrial legacy: safety concerns, economic viability, and lack of public interest in the issue. 103 To these issues may be added the absence of any local city policy protecting Soviet (as opposed to prerevolutionary) industrial landscapes, 104 and the near lack of public documents relating to these sites, due to their production under totalitarian governance (Figure 26). With the aim of illuminating the Soviet industrial legacy and shifting public attitudes about it to a more positive perception, the Map Me Happy initiative (Mapmehappy.com.ua) was established through the collaboration of the international architectural festival CANactions and the European Geography Association (https://egea.eu/) in 2014. Map Me Happy permitted and encouraged citizens of Kyiv to convey their emotions about specific sites in the city, by providing a straightforward interface of a large city map, and annotatable adhesives. This project was triggered by the designers’ sense of the public’s lack of acquaintance with the Soviet built environment, a negative attitude regarding urban issues that is common in postsocialist countries.

Top: A sample of community perceptions of Kyiv’s ex-industrial landscape, from the Map Me Happy project (mapmehappy.com). Bottom left, right: A temporary intervention in the “Tyhiy Hid” (One Small Step) project, 2014, in the Telychansko-Korchuvatyy district. Photo by Andrew Mykhailov.
The methodology of Map Me Happy grows from theoretical and conceptual grounds in urbanism that were established by American researchers in the Modernist and Postmodernist eras: Lynch’s Image of the City (1960), Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities (1962), Venturi and Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Rowe and Koetter’s Collage City (1978), and contemporary urbanist Campo’s Accidental Playground (2013). With this theoretical work in mind, this social digital tool might depict the real uses still occurring in underused industrial areas, understand their current, socially constructed value, and perhaps most importantly, collect people’s stories and memories for sites and in a society that had previously vastly undervalued the same. Ultimately, Map Me Happy takes a critical first step toward the introduction of participatory urban design methods to the industrial landscape of Kyiv.
Temporary occupation and do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism: “Tyhiy Khid”/“Quiet Move,” for example, “One Small Step”
In 2014, a collaborative project between international architecture festival CANactions and cultural festival Gogolfest touched upon the subject of reactivating industrial space with a multidisciplinary effort. A diverse team of urbanists together with festivalgoers and local stakeholders created a temporary public space at the Dnipro shore, adjacent to an abandoned “river station” constructed in the Soviet era for passenger ships. This was previously an invisible space, hidden behind fences. Situated in the large industrial Telychansko-Korchuvatyy district, the site is located just a fifteen-minute walk from the metro Vydubychi, with a beautiful view that juxtaposes successional nature and an industrial landscape. With an extremely small budget and crowdsourcing of additional funds, this space, called “Tyhiy Khid” (a “quiet move,” or small step), was transformed through “DIY” construction. Participants explored the potential of this area to see whether it could exist as a public space (Figure 26).
As the main task, the team addressed the newly discovered access to the river, defining a key factor for the redevelopment of the gritty, industrial Telychansko-Korchuvatyy district. After the residency, the boat station came back to its routine, functioning as a river station with only limited access to the public. While the future of the territory is not clear today (2019), future public access as a catalyst for all district development was designated in a revitalization project for Telychka by architectural firm Zotov&Co (http://www.zotov.com.ua/en/). Although “Tyhiy Hid” does not literally “map on” to Map Me Happy, 105 this and other DIY or temporary Kyiv urban spaces could be MMH’s potential logical extension. Temporary occupation of hidden but beautiful industrial sites could become the next step in exploring, improving, and testing public perceptions of the Kyiv landscape.
KARZ-12: “Stand-in” occupation in industrial buildings under transformation
The last case study of emerging scenarios for industrial districts is nearby the aforementioned Lenin Forge II (Rybalsky) works, in the Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy industrial district. With close proximity to the vibrant and historic Podil district, rich with youth-related activity and cultural organizations, this former industrial area has experienced much alternative development since Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution. CEDOS, a local urban think tank office, has recently written that the Podil district is thriving with numerous local public initiatives (informal cultural institutions and start-ups) and that Podil is serving as a venue for the emergence of civil society in Kyiv in general. 106 One of the most compelling projects in the Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district includes a multidisciplinary platform for cultural initiatives called the “Port Creative Hub,” a cultural platform called IZOLYATSIA (https://izolyatsia.org/en/), a cultural center called MetaCulture (https://www.metaculturekyiv.com/), the KARZ-12 group described below, and several art galleries (Figure 27). Beyond these uses being geographically located together in the large Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district, these cultural activities share an attitude of celebration of Soviet architectural and urban heritage through rehabilitation of its legacy, holding public programs to enhance civil society and bring together like-minded creative class members, and expressing a certain level of creative practice through collective action.

Top: The Kyiv shipbuilding and ship repairing plant with buildings occupied by cultural industries highlighted. Bottom: KARZ-12 participants and events. Source: Authors (top left); http://karz-12.com.ua/ (top R, bottom L, R).
In the beginning of 2019, a new alternative scenario for industrial urban space was pioneered in Kyiv. Four “urban initiatives” comprising a mix of for-profit and nonprofit urban and design practices—Agent of Changes (http://a3.kyiv.ua/), Urban Curators (https://urbancurators.com.ua/), Hmarochos (https://hmarochos.kiev.ua/), A+C (https://apluss.pro/)—relocated their offices to the former Kyiv automobile repair works, otherwise known as KARZ-12 (http://bit.ly/32c4sRz), in the Petrivsko [Podilsko]-Kurenivskyy district. According to a methodology for temporary projects suggested by European agency Urban Catalyst, 107 KARZ-12 is a stand-in scenario. Signing a short-term lease for office rent and a multifunctional space for events, the team of four firms aims to capture the current industrial value and contribute to the future of this area as a residential district by suggesting mixed-use scenarios. Having no formal mandate, the team acts as a group of activists rather than as formal actors.
Their short-term value of KARZ-12 is undeniable. In its small time in existence, it has held several public events. Nevertheless, this stand-in scenario is today being affected by typical shortcomings of temporary uses that have been described by different scholars. These are vulnerability, 108 the risk of almost no influence on long-term spatial transformation, 109 and proportional mismatch, where an informal scenario struggles for “formalization” within a context where the district is under active top-down transformations, rendering the informal project potentially considered naive and ineffective.
Concluding Thoughts
Kyiv and Ukraine are a city and nation in transformation. Struggles in governance, rule of law, establishment of institutions, and stability of the economy have influenced the limited, or slow, postindustrial transformation seen in the case studies examined in this study. At the same time, these ongoing transformations create potential vulnerabilities for alternative scenarios’ long-term effect and influence on official, conventional, planning in Kyiv’s Soviet industrial districts.
Kyiv’s current political and economic structure do not necessarily promote alternative scenarios for postindustrial transformation. The city not only has large inventories of abandoned land (around 30 percent 110 ) but comparatively weak governance, outdated and even conflicting planning regulations, lack of enforcement, lack of financial support for public projects, and localization of power in the hand of capital interests who are not necessarily enlightened. All of these sad realities are true of many other post-Soviet countries including Russia, but a bright spot in Kyiv is the presence of democracy, however underdeveloped, and the flourishing of civil society, particularly in the form of citizen-led urban interventions in Kyiv’s industrial fabric.
Within this context, the next, necessary steps for increasing the role and transformative potential of alternative scenarios fall to different stakeholders. Those organizations leading alternative projects, such as KARZ-12, could further develop the ecosystem of temporary projects to enable them to further share knowledge and resources and to resist undesirable conflict with the formal sector. Furthermore, the professional community, acting as a bridge to some extent between civil society and the formal private and public sectors, might further support these temporary scenarios in order to advocate them to both developers and representatives of the municipality.
Kyiv’s Soviet legacy, and its legacy of post-Soviet transformation, far transcend industrial architecture alone, and far transcend the national boundaries of Ukraine. Industrialization affected almost every city in the global north and many in the global south as well, such as Sao Paulo and Kolkata (Calcutta). Transformation of industrial legacies in a manner that respects heritage, permits pluralistic interpretation and reuse, and that stimulates and supports cultural creativity in a market-friendly context will present challenges for many postindustrial cities. Kyiv benefits from an extraordinarily rich legacy of industrialization, and from a fertile, if somewhat anarchic, period of gradual postindependence experimentation of transformative measures—what this study has termed “sleeping urbanism.” Several aspects of Kyiv’s transformation process of industrial legacy merit continued attention. First, preservationists should continue the existing process of incorporating Modernism into practices of heritage. Kyiv industry’s cultural clubs for industrial workers, landscape strategies, related housing, and large-span buildings are manifestations of twentieth-century architecture and urbanism that cannot, and should not, be ignored. Second, Kyiv offers promising lessons on how industrial space transformation can occur in ways that are not dependence on state support. Explaining such facilities as Art-Zavod and UnitCity was beyond the scope of this study but should be considered for future research. Lastly, temporary and small cultural and art activities have benefited from the comparative deregulation, low costs, sleeping urbanism, and overall deregulated atmosphere of postindependence Kyiv. In other words, when it comes to industrial transformation, more rules are not always better, though such libertarianism might also open the door to unregulated capitalism.
This study’s exploration of the rich built heritage of Kyiv’s industrial districts, together with the alternative scenarios for these industrial districts’ rehabilitation, shows the great possibilities for an alternative future in Kyiv, one that would set a standard for the preservation of an impressive Soviet industrial legacy that is still little explored and understood, and in addressing proactively and creatively the causes that have driven demolition and abandonment of this industrial legacy. Yet, without ongoing support, further implementation, and appreciation from the formal sectors, alternative strategies may be limited in their influence on conventional development in Ukraine’s largest city.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was carried out as part of the Fulbright Research and Development Program 2017-2018 of Anastasiya Ponomaryova.
